Holes of Invermere (Shallow Thoughts)

Holes of Invermere

It was 2001, and Dave and I were off on a road trip to see the Canadian Rockies. My first time in another country! (Not counting an hour or two in Tijuana as a kid, and a day trip to New Brunswick as a college student.)

Our plan was to drive up through Portland, then follow the Columbia River through eastern Oregon, Washington and Idaho — places I'd always wanted to see. We'd make our way into Canada, up to Banff and Jasper, then make a loop coming back down through Glacier. Beyond that we didn't have any specific plans. We like to stay fairly flexible when we travel — you never know ahead of time which places are going to turn out to be interesting.

The down side of that is that sometimes there's no room at the inn. Our first night, Portland was pretty well booked up. We finally found space at a Motel 6, where people kept us up with loud parties that lasted until three in the morning. Ugh. (As we got older, we learned to book ahead.) But the next day was lovely: we saw all the waterfalls along the little roads by the Columbia river, then followed the gorge, with its layers of basalt flows, heading toward terra incognita.

The next couple of days were equally great -- we stayed in small towns with charming little restaurants and parks, and we admired beautiful scenery, like the Coulees and Cor d'Alene lake, places I'd wanted to see for ages. And finally we found ourselves at ... THE BORDER!

We had our passports all ready to show at the border station. We had no idea if we needed passports or not (this was way before 9/11) but we'd gotten them a while back, just in case. It turned out the only problem with crossing into Canada is getting the attention of someone at the station. They didn't want to search us or interrogate us or see passports or anything. They didn't want to come to the window at all. I suspect they were in there watching TV or playing video games.

But eventually they noticed us and let us through ... and there we were, in ANOTHER COUNTRY!

Well, actually it looked pretty much like the country we'd left. A little windy highway through a forest, and every now and then we'd see the Columbia river again. There were signs warning about moose. Wow! I wanted to see a moose! I've never seen one! But of course we didn't see any moose. Just a few deer. (It's 2025 as I write this, and I've still never seen a moose.)

The drive was very pleasant. Time passed and we started to think about stopping places. Checking the map, it looked like a good place to stop for the night would be a pair of towns right next to each other: Invermere and Windemere. I checked the trusty triple-A guide for hotel prices -- what we used to do before smartphones and data plans. Wow! Windemere's prices were about double Invermere's. You can probably guess which one we chose.

We pulled into Invermere in the mid-afternoon, found a hotel, and set out to explore the town. When we're travelling, we like to walk walk around exploring the town where we're staying. After driving most of the day, it's always nice to stand up and stretch our legs.

We could see Windemere across the river. It turns out that Windemere is the place with all the fancy resorts on one side of the river, and Invermere is the small town on the other side where normal people live. That was fine with us: we were on the right side of the river.

Invermere is a small town in a forest. Trees everywhere, pine needles on the ground. Really pretty.

Near the center of town there's sort of a park -- or at least, an empty space where there are no buildings, just trees. There was a big empty area between the trees ... but as we walked up, we could see it wasn't just an empty area. It was some sort of huge sinkhole! The size of a swimming pool, only deeper than that, sitting there in the middle of the trees for no obvious reason.

We stood there for quite a while, looking at the sinkhole and trying to guess what might have caused it. Finally we gave up -- no idea -- and wandered back toward the center of town.

We found what seemed to be main street, and saw a sign: LIBRARY. It's always fun to take a look at libraries when you're travelling, so we went over to look. Under the LIBRARY sign, a stairway led down -- apparently the entrance was below ground level.

We were almost to the stairway when I caught motion out of the corner of my eye. "Look out!", I cried, and pulled Dave out of the way just in time as a fellow on a mountain bike came flashing across the street. We felt the wind whip us as he passed us and disappeared down the stairway.

We looked at each other, eyes big, then ran to the top of the stairs to look down. At the bottom of the stairs -- RIGHT at the bottom -- was the library door. There was no sign of the bike or its rider. Even when we ran down the stairs and looked in -- nothing!

Apparently there was more than one hole in Invermere!

By then it was nearing dinnertime. We found a nice looking little restaurant. We were waiting for our food, chatting about the trip, when suddenly Dave stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes were wide. I asked why.

He pointed behind me. "See that panel in the wall behind you? That little panel?"

I looked. You could see a seam in the wall, maybe three feet high and three feet wide.

Dave said, "The waiter just walked up carrying a glass of water, pulled that panel open, passed the glass in and closed it again."

We stared for a while, but nothing else happened, and we went back to our conversation.

Our drinks arrived. We talked about what to do next. We were heading into the national parks, and hoping to make it up to Jasper by the next evening. But Dave was worried about what the road might be like. Would that be a reasonable day's drive? Might it be snowed in? "Maybe we should--"

He stopped, and his eyes were wide again. I turned around, but all I saw was the waiter walking away.

Dave said, "The waiter just walked up, opened that panel again, and passed in a sandwich."

We stared. The panel remained closed. I wasn't sure if Dave was hallucinating, or if there was ... something ... living under the restaurant.

Our food arrived. It was really good! We ate for a while, and discussed plans, but Dave was really distracted. He kept looking over my shoulder to see if something else would happen. Before long he had me doing it too. But the panel remained quiet.

We were finished with our dinners and waiting for the check when a loud crashing erupted from behind me. I turned around and we both stared as the panel popped open on its own -- and a little wizened old man crawled out!

He was wearing coveralls. He was covered in dust and dirt. He sneezed and stamped -- a cloud of dust flew off him.

We couldn't even watch -- we had dust in our eyes, and besides, we were laughing too hard.

The rest of the trip was great. We saw Jasper, Banff, Glacier and lots of other beautiful places. But the Holes of Invermere were definitely a memorable highlight of the trip.

Photos from that trip (but sadly, none from Invermere): Sabbatical trip photos.